One under-reported target of President Donald Trump’s January 20 blizzard of executive orders is environmental justice. Trump rescinded executive orders addressing environmental justice going back to the Clinton Administration and ordered the termination of environmental justice offices and positions. This will make it easier for polluting industries to harm disadvantaged communities and harder to hold polluting industries to account when they do. This is racism in policy. It’s not making America great again. It’s making Americans sick again and again and again.
Of course, Trump’s executive order on "Unleashing American Energy," aka “Drill, baby, drill,” makes the entire world a sacrifice zone for the profiteering of U.S. fossil fuel companies. True environmental justice would make these polluters pay for the damage they are knowingly and intentionally causing around the world.
Oregonians can fight back by supporting SJR28, a joint resolution proposing an Environmental Rights Amendment to the Oregon Constitution, (“Should Oregon add an environmental rights amendment to its Constitution? Beat Check podcast,” July 29).
They can also support SB682, a bill that would establish a Climate Superfund cost recovery program within the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
Scott Killops, Portland
To read more letters to the editor, go to oregonlive.com/opinion.
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